John R. Gabourel – copyright 2011-19

Tag Archives: do guns cause suicide

Oregonian journalist, Maxine Bernstein, is a crafty fabricator, and I cannot help but believe her editor, Peter Bhatia, knows it. Yet Bhatia still placed Bernstein’s anti-gun, white-male-hating article, Identifying, Preventing the Growth of a Killer, on the front page of the December 12, 2013 edition of The Oregonian like an enormous weeping boil. By using great care to game her facts and statistics, Bernstein soundly blames America’s culture of manly, competitive self-sufficiency for our high murder and suicide rates as well as all of our gun violence. Except pretty much everything she wrote is wrong. I am here to set the record straight.

Of the five most populated nations on Earth, only China has a combined violent death/suicide rate lower (barely) than America’s

Guns Cause Suicides? Really?

First off, do not believe Maxine B when she implies that America’s plethora of privately owned firearms lead to a huge increase in suicides and violent deaths. She is lying like a bad toupee. For instance, she says that Americans shoot each other at least seven times more than the good citizens from India shoot each other. That is because Indians, for the most part, are not allowed to own guns. What Classy Maxie forgot to mention is that the combined rate of suicide and violent death in India is more than 40% higher than America’s, and combined rate of France is only a scant 10% lower than the U.S. rate. About 639 Indians commit suicide every day, mostly by hanging. The same goes for the French – despite owning more than 30 guns per 100 citizens, the French still prefer to hang themselves. The bottom line is the global average of 175 countries for suicide is about 9.5 per 100,000 in population, and America’s suicide rate is about 10.4 per 100,000 in population. There is absolutely no global correlation between increased rates of gun ownership and increase rates of suicide. However, there is a direct correlation between decreasing rates of lawful gun ownership and increasing rates of violent deaths.

While global suicide rates remain statistically flat as lawful gun ownership rates drop, the risk of a violent death increases substantially for the average, disarmed society

The White Man Does Bad Again

Next good ol’ Maxibad makes the claim that violence be Whitey’s fault. “Between 1982 and 2001, for example, white men were responsible for all but two of the mass shootings inside middle schools and high schools.” Nice try, chicken, but let’s go again. The FBI definition for a mass shooting (or mass event) is four or more injuries in one event. Between 1980 and 2013 there were 37 mass school shootings and 1 mass bombing that occurred at elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and colleges, involving approximately 41 perpetrators. Only 25 were white males. Let’s break that down for Mizz Bernstein.

12.6% of America’s population is African-American. About 19% of the mass event perps were black.

4.8% of America’s population is Asian. 10% of the mass event perps were Asian.

0.9% of America’s population is native. One mass event perp was Native American.

16.4% of America’s population is Hispanic. One mass event perp was Hispanic.

0.8% of America’s population is Muslim. One mass event perp was Persian.

72.4% of America’s population is white. 61% of the perps be Whitey.

The single most common thread tying most of the killers together is their collective history of mental illness, not their “whiteness.” About 40 years ago or so, progressives like Maxine Bernstein (and her expert, PSU psych-guy, Eric Mankowski, dare I say) decided to take the mentally ill out of the institutions and put them on the street. Crazy people wandering loose do crazy things and today, thanks to left-wing progressives, it is almost impossible to put them in an institution until it is way too late. As for providing quality psych services for the at-risk population, that ain’t gonna happen, either. About half of all psychiatrists refuse to accept patients on medicare or medicaid. That, not lawfully owned firearms, equals dead educators and dead students.

Testosterone – Fact or Fiction

Last, for some reason Maxine B wants to imply that men being aggressive is something new and dangerous, and society needs to reprogram (prenatally, no less – Gattaca anyone?) its young men to be… well… to be women. Men just need to cry more and strive less, I guess. Men would never be competitive or self-sufficient unless society taught them so. Yes, that is right, folks, testosterone is not a ubiquitous endogenous male hormone, rather it is a taught behavior. Darwin had it all wrong, don’t ya know. Before guns existed men only wore pastels, always played nice and took turns being king. Before guns existed, the world was not a vicious place where men hacked each other to bits with swords, burned villages and raped women. Really Maxine? What history have you been reading? Holy shit! The fact is, in the real world the rate of violence has been declining for centuries. Too bad the left-wingers are creating such a vast fiction. I suppose just about now the U.S. Secret Service is labeling me a threat because I strive for success and self-sufficiency rather than relying on the nanny state for everything while crying myself to sleep every night.

Fish In A Barrel – With a Bullseye

All this makes me wonder what is wrong inside Maxine Bernstein’s head? What is wrong with her editor, Peter Bhatia? The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States no more sanctions obfuscation, disinformation and lies than the Second Amendment sanctions murder. Yet, while murderers go to prison, journalists like Maxine B hide within the folds of the First Amendment cloak so they can lie with utter impunity and call it journalistic integrity. Unfortunately, no single psychological profile or set of warning signs can reliably predict which journalists will undermine the Constitution of the United States or be the next mass fabricator. Simply put, it is a buyer-beware industry. Journalists write, but it is the citizen’s responsibility to fact-check, not Peter Bhatia’s. Oh, and a message to Maxine – Honesty earns respect.

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The Knight and the Serpent

The means by which we succeed defines who we are. In the end, our character is all we can take with us. JRG

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A Ration of Chocolate

When Big Brother came for the landowner and took his property away,
I did nothing.
When Big Brother came for the Christians singing carols in the park,
I did nothing.
When Big Brother tried to force pro-life hospitals and healthcare workers to perform abortions,
I did nothing.
When Big Brother created a vast surveillance network that tracked my every move and every word,
I did nothing.
When Big Brother took away my right to bear arms and resist tyranny,
I did nothing.
When Big Brother finally came for me,
I accepted my ration of chocolate and did what I was told, for I would rather live safely in subjugation than risk death as a free man.